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French bread, English butter?
COVER STORY: NEWS FOCUS EXCLUSIVE
Busy France Broke Britain - but UK politicians are turning heritage-friendly
Conservation work underway at the Grand Commun building, beside the Palace of Versailles. Governments in France have long been accused of favouring historic buildings in and around Paris, and neglecting other cities and départements. However, the new economic deal for heritage work broadens the scope of state-funded conservation across France
Nicolas Sarkozy has announced a huge rise in funding for heritage conservation across France, part of an economic package to boost the economy. Meanwhile, the historic buildings sector in the UK is under increasing pressure to rationalise already meagre resources. Yet on this side of the Channel there are now signs that opposition politicians are ready to embrace the idea of increased spending on maintaining our past – tens of millions of pounds of it, as ‘Cornerstone’ can reveal. Is this a calculated bid for the middle class vote, or could MPs’ new-found love for the old actually be genuine? Patrick Sawer and Robin Stummer report.
French bread, English butter?
Politicians in the UK are jostling for the heritage vote in the run up to the General Election by pledging a significant increase in public spending on repairing and conserving Britain’s historic buildings, Cornerstone can reveal.
For the first time the main opposition parties have put a figure on how much more they are prepared to place in the much-depleted heritage pot, with tens of millions of pounds of extra funding promised. They argue that a major programme of government investment would not only boost tourism and visitor numbers, but also create hundreds of new jobs and help safeguard traditional craft and building skills.
Both the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats have promised millions extra for the heritage sector, with the Tories promising a cash injection of up to £40m to be paid for through changes in the way the National Lottery is run.
The dramatic change of heart on heritage spending has echoes of the massive programme of investment recently unveiled across the Channel, where the government of Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this year announced 100m euro (£87m) of extra spending on the state’s cultural heritage. The unprecedented stimulus package was conceived as a means of helping to protect France from the worst effects of the global recession, by promoting employment and business activity in a sector dear to French hearts.
As part of France’s spending spree huge sums are being poured into repairs at around 50 chateaux – such as Fontainebleau and Versailles – along with some 75 cathedrals. The cultural investment programme is part of a wider 25 billion euro (£21bn) economic stimulus package announced by President Sarkozy to slow and reverse the financial downturn.
According to its supporters, the French heritage boost is paying dividends, with new cultural buildings planned, including a museum dedicated to Lalique glass at Strasbourg, and a new 10m euro centre for Mediterranean culture, to open in Marseilles. Specialist trades are already reporting a surge of activity, with stonemasons and conservators already at work at prestigious historic sites such as the Palace of Fontainebleau. “We want rapid results,” said Patrick Devedjian, the minister in charge of the heritage stimulus package – a post which was created this year by President Sarkozy.
“WE WANT RAPID RESULTS”, SAID THE MINISTER IN CHARGE OF FRANCE’S HERITAGE STIMULUS PACKAGE
While few British politicians are prepared to argue that this country should match French levels of subsidy, there appears to be a much greater willingness to consider increased levels of spending on our own historic buildings. Opposition parties now argue that in recent years the pendulum swung too far away from investment in built heritage, with millions of pounds of National Lottery funds diverted to “prestige” projects, most notably the 2012 Olympics in London.
Between 2000 and 2008 the Government cut English Heritage’s funding from £144m to £125m, while £90m of Lottery revenue has been diverted from heritage projects in order to pay for the building of the Olympic park, now taking shape in east London. The problem of long-term government under-funding of the nation’s world-renowned stock of historic architecture and sites has been compounded by a fall in the number of visits to EH’s staffed properties, from 5.9m in 1997 to 5.3m last year.
The Conservatives have for the first time put a figure to how much extra they are prepared to pledge in an increase in spending on Britain’s historic assets. Earlier this year party leader David Cameron promised to return up to £182m of Lottery funding to grass-roots sports, arts projects and the voluntary sector by preventing funds being diverted to areas of government responsibility. He said: “Our National Lottery
Independence Bill will end political interference, stop ministers grabbing Lottery cash and potentially generate an extra £182m for the good causes of the arts, sports, heritage and charities.”
As part of that promise, up to £40m of the £182m has now been earmarked for heritage causes, and another £40m for the arts. Another £40m is to be spent on voluntary sport initiatives, with the rest going to charities. Around £100m of the extra cash would come from diverting Lottery funding currently going to non-voluntary projects, such as local authority schemes, back to voluntary, grass-roots projects in heritage, the arts and sport. The Tories say that a further £45.4m would be raised through a tax on the National Lottery’s gross profits, and the remainder, some £36m, from cuts in administration costs.
Jeremy Hunt, Shadow Culture Secretary, told Cornerstone that the £182m in extra funding would alone pay in full for urgent repairs required by England’s cathedrals. “Labour has never understood that the point of Lottery funds is that they should be independent of government,” he said. “These reforms will cut the bloated bureaucracy of Lottery distributors and mean more money is used to back the initiative and enthusiasm of heritage, arts, sport and voluntary organisations – the very groups the Lottery was always meant to support.”
THE Liberal Democrats have also promised that increased investment in the built heritage sector would be one of their priorities. Don Foster, LibDem Shadow Secretary for Culture, Media and Sport, told Cornerstone: “We have long argued that the Labour government has disregarded the importance of our national heritage both in terms of its contribution to the economy and to national identity. Dropping the Heritage Protection Bill from the Queen’s Speech last year, for example, showed a lack of importance attached to the heritage sector by the Government.
“The Government has cut funding to English Heritage, Lottery funding has been reduced because of diversions to the Olympics, and educational visits to heritage sites are in decline.
“Putting money into our heritage could boost the economy, not least through increasing its contribution to tourism. There are a number of practical things that could be done to help – such as VAT relief on repairs and maintenance of listed buildings, and tax incentives for maintenance. We have also consistently called for the taxation regime for the National Lottery to be changed to bring more money in for good causes and ease the pain of lottery diversions.”
Among the keenest supporters of increased state subsidies for heritage is the Green Party, which has described the French package as similar in aim to its own proposal for a £44bn Green New Deal to invest in creating green jobs and repairing Britain’s infrastructure.
‘INVESTING IN HISTORIC BUILDINGS IS A WAY OF HELPING THE COUNTRY OUT OF RECESSION’
PHILIP VENNING, SPAB SECRETARY
Professor John Whitelegg, the Green Party’s Spokesperson on Sustainable Development, told Cornerstone: “A high proportion of the jobs in the heritage industry will be skilled work, and the effort as a whole will be quite low-carbon. National heritage is really important, and if we’re going to spend extra money on it, there’s no better time than now.
“This makes far more sense than car scrappage schemes, building polluting roads or throwing money into a nuclear black hole,” said Prof Whitelegg. “The UK has a splendid heritage of fine buildings, with many in a poor state of repair and ready to make a substantial contribution to the local economy through sensitive renovation, rehabilitation and re-use for community purposes.
“Some people will say we should be making spending cuts. The Green Party disagrees. It’s worth raising more revenue to protect our national heritage, just as it is to improve public transport and healthcare and education and develop the new green industries. We need to get our economy out of recession and on to a sustainable footing, and we should look very closely at the opportunities for looking after our national heritage as part of a recovery plan.”
Many in the heritage sector are bound to be sceptical of such pledges, particularly at a time of increased pressure to cut public spending in the face of falling tax revenues and increased strain on welfare provision. But the apparent new willingness on the part of some politicians to recognise the economic importance of heritage spending will be a welcome change of tone from that which has characterised the past 15 years.
The Department for Culture Media and Sport has, however, made it clear there would be no significant increase in spending on heritage under the Labour administration. A spokesman told Cornerstone: “We don’t see a ‘New Deal’ as being part of the Government’s thinking at the moment.
“Heritage is of course an important sector, but in the current economic climate there are no plans to increase spending in that area. “In fact, bodies such as English Heritage are being asked to look for ways of finding better value for money.”
The SPAB has long argued that built heritage deserves not only secure and strategically planned funding, but has always pressed for recognition, by successive governments of all political shades, that historic buildings are central to the nation’s cultural, educational and aesthetic well-being – and that their sensitive repair and maintenance makes good economic sense.
“Labour has been blinkered to all that heritage brings to people’s lives by steadily cutting public spending on it for many years,” says SPAB Secretary, Philip Venning.
“Let’s hope they finally wake up to what the other political parties and the French have recognised: that investing in historic buildings is a simple and obvious way of helping the country out of recession.”
WHILE Whitehall seeks ever greater savings on the upkeep of the nation’s past, the Élysée is forging ahead with the protection of France’s cultural treasures. The effect of this extra investment on employment – especially among hard-pressed specialist crafts workers – is expected to be profound and wide-ranging.
“We have been battling for around six years for help,” Christophe Eschlimann, President of the French professional body for conservators, craftspeople and conservation businesses, Le Groupement Français des Entreprises de Restauration de Monuments Historiques (GMH), told Cornerstone.
paying for the past
“At first we were given some small measures by the government, from privatisation, a little bit of money when the state privatised the motorways,” says Eschlimann. “It was two small measures given over six years, which gave a little bit of help, but did not last long.”
In 2008, the GMH appealed for no less than 11bn euros (£9.6bn) to save France’s historic buildings from decay. At the time, this was more than three times the Culture Ministry’s entire annual budget. A year earlier, a survey of historic buildings in France found that 41 per cent were in a “defective” state, and that nearly 3,000 were in a “perilous” condition. From 2007 to 2008, the French government cut funding for repair and maintenance at historic buildings by 20 per cent. Historic buildings in entire French départements went without repair or maintenance. Yet even cut back, state support for historic buildings across the Channel still makes Whitehall’s increasingly sparse handouts seem paltry in the extreme.
In 2007-8, the French state’s annual budget for historic building maintenance was around 300m euros (£264m). EH has a total of around £180m a year at its disposal, but some £50m of this derives from visitor admissions and retail sales. Between 1998 and last year, EH’s annual budget for grants to “At Risk” cases was cut from £8m to £4.1m.
Despite the cuts of recent years, culture and heritage remain high on the French political agenda, a position they have enjoyed for generations. The widespread consensus among political parties of all shades that the protection of the cultural wealth of the nation is primarily a function of government is unshaken, despite economic hardship. Indeed, it is possible that the recent financial crisis has sharpened, rather than dulled, the French public’s appetite for culture and the protection of the nation’s past.
FRANCE has more than 42,000 nationally listed historic buildings, with around half of them owned by the state. By British standards, state grant aid to help private owners maintain their historic buildings is extremely generous. Nevertheless, there has been concern in France that though around 50 per cent of listed historic buildings in the country, some 20,000 of them, are in private hands, only around 10 per cent of the total government budget for repair and maintenance is set aside for private owners.
However, unlike in Britain, tax breaks for repairs are readily available.
“The economic crisis has been a benefit for us for the moment,” says Eschlimann, “as we have been included in the financial boost by the French government.
“As the government wants this plan to be successful, bureaucracy relating to the extra support measures is being dealt with very quickly. They have created a new post of secretary of state for that, so that everything works efficiently, so that’s good.
“Nicolas Sarkozy made an announcement that during his presidency we will have 100m euros more in the budget for historic monuments. So that would make 400m euros in all. We have been battling for 400m euros for seven years now. So that is very satisfying, as long as it is followed by action. Today we are at a turning point, as it is now that the budget for 2010 is being made in all different government departments. It is now that
our fate will be played out.”
Additional research by Cecile Bramley
In love with heritage… or not
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